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Wednesday, October 26, 2011

Round Two


With the proliferation of digital media and the expansion of music distributed around the world, the work of a DJ to create a unique piece of work that goes beyond what has been previously recorded has to be challenging, if not downright daunting.  I’m certain there will be naysayers, but DJs are musicians.  While in general they are not physically creating the music through musical instruments, they are taking songs, sound clips, and other things they can find in order to create songs and albums that will reach a broader audience, much like a guitarist, pianist, or whomever would attempt to write a riff or song or album that is different from what anyone else has released.  Sure, there are “formulas” for writing, but a true innovator will rework the formula to improve it.

Four Tet’s Kieran Hebden is a DJ that has embraced technology in order to obtain the samples he uses for his songs.  Unlike the traditional DJs who use two or more turntables and a large collection of vinyl records, Hebden has a tremendous collection of digital samples that he borrows from in order to create his music.  From a purely storage and organizational point of view, this is probably the easiest way to go now; with a 1-TB external hard drive you can store 2,000 hours of uncompressed audio files or 17,000 hours of compressed audio (at 128 kB/s).  A traditionalist could have crate after crate after crate of vinyl records but would probably not come close to the amount of available audio a digital storage device would have.  A tradeoff between digital and analog vinyl is that vinyl has a warmer sound to it; digital music, despite what efforts the user takes to rip the music, really cannot achieve this warmth.

All of this said (having expanded this tangent for long enough), Four Tet’s Rounds expands on the sounds Hebden delivered on Pause to create a record that has been critically-acclaimed and led Hebden to more gigs and recording opportunities with other artists.

# 30 - Four Tet, Rounds (Metascore = 89)

I heard Four Tet’s record Rounds prior to hearing Pause, so perhaps my impressions of Pause were affected by that.  Pause was a good record, particularly for it being the first big label release.  Rounds takes the sounds from Pause to a whole new level.  Unlike Pause, Rounds sounds and feels more cohesive.  There is something more organic about the way that Hebden has pieced the music and sound clips together that the record doesn’t totally feel like CGI, or rather CGS (since CGI would be images, CGS seems more appropriate, which probably doesn’t exist in this fashion, but whatever).

Gone in my opinion is the “folktronica” or whatever hokey descriptions were given for Pause.  Still here is the Asian influence (Hebden’s parents are from India, though he grew up in London) and a broader palette of beats to improve on the overall ambience he created in Pause.  One critic even hinted that Hebden had integrated cinematic ideas into this record, which, upon a further listen to the record, I can hear what that critic is hearing.  How Hebden has set up the track order could play easily into a Ocean’s Eleven crime caper.

For me this is easily one of the more enjoyable electronic records of any style I have heard.  Tracks like “As Serious As Your Life”, “Unspoken” and “She Moves She” are so perfectly put together that the flow of the record just feels right.  There are not really any throwaways in my opinion; each track integrates with other to create this amazing soundscape.  I would go so far as to say this is one of the better records I have heard to.  It sounds like the work of someone who has taken the time to carefully craft and document a record that would have a long-lasting impact on future recordings from other artists.

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